The present invention relates to network management, and more specifically, to a applying a client policy to a group of channels.
Network traffic going through a physical port may be controlled or monitored via properties that are applied to the physical port itself. Furthermore, an 802.1Qbg standard may define how virtual ports may be created and how to apply policies on each of the individual virtual ports. Under the IEEE 802.1Qbg standard, one or more “S-Channels” may be created and each channel may be associated with a profile ID. A server can have multiple virtual machines (VMs), where a network administrator can set up the policy (or a profile ID) for a given VM in a network database. When the VM is registered with a switch, the switch can query the network database to get one or more fields of the specified profile ID and map at least one field to the VM.
A problem may arise when certain services for a given client or a customer are to be offered based on (or using) an aggregate group of these S-Channels or virtual ports that can span different physical ports. For example, a given customer may require (or may be required to have) certain policies regarding services or restrictions (e.g. per customer's service level agreement (SLA)) to be applied to all of the customer's channels. These types of policies may not be put in the profile ID because the profile ID may be applicable to multiple customers and the channel may need customer specific configuration(s). Thus, a challenge is presented in how to standardize maintaining operating properties for each channel or virtual port profile and/or access control lists (ACLs) while complying with the properties for the aggregate bundle or group of channels.